Sometimes I thought that they were laughing at me when they declared that England was on the other side of the Atlantic, and that Bonaparte belonged by birth to a noble family of Kalonga. When I told them stories of what I had seen, they hardly believed me, but they all loved terrible tales intermixed with history. Even the men of mature years evidently preferred imagination to the truth. I could see very well that the more improbable the events, the more fantastic the story, the more attentively they listened to me. On the whole, reality did not interest them, and they all gazed dreamily into the future, not wishing to see the poverty and hideousness of the present. This astonished me so much the more, inasmuch as I had felt keenly enough the contradiction existing between life and books. Here before me were living people, and in books there were none like them--no Smouri, stoker Yaakov, fugitive Aleksander Vassiliev, Jikharev, or washerwoman Natalia. In Davidov's trunk a torn copy of Golitzinski's stories was found--"Ivan Vuijigin," "The Bulgar," "A Volume of Baron Brambeuss." I read all these aloud to them, and they were delighted. Larionovich said: "Reading prevents quarrels and noise; it is a good thing!" I began to look about diligently for books, found them, and read almost every evening. Those were pleasant evenings. It was as quiet as night in the workshop; the glass balls hung over the tables like white cold stars, their rays lighting up shaggy and bald heads. I saw round me at the table, calm, thoughtful faces; now and again an exclamation of praise of the author, or hero was heard. They were attentive and benign, quite unlike themselves. I liked them very much at those times, and they also behaved well to me. I felt that I was in my right place. "When we have books it is like spring with us; when the winter frames are taken out and for the first time we can open the windows as we like," said Sitanov one day. It was hard to find books. We could not afford to subscribe to a library, but I managed to get them somehow, asking for them wherever I went, as a charity. One day the second officer of the fire brigade gave me the first volume of "Lermontov," and it was from this that I felt the power of poetry, and its mighty influence over people. I remember even now how, at the first lines of "The Demon," Sitanov looked first at the book and then at my face, laid down his brush on the table, and, embracing his knee with his long arms, rocked to and fro, smiling.